A Word Edgewise |
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A Word Edgewise |
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Last Updated 01/20/06
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Email: mjclen@our-town.com
This Year the Flag is Very Popular
This last year has been a “flag conscious” year for the American people. On almost ever block, down every street business and private, on cars, trees, and clothing, the red, white and blue stands proudly.
Most Texans know, and some can name them, that Texas
has been under six flags. But few of us know much about the evolution of the
flag of the United States.
About the most many of us know of the history of our
flag was the bit in the history books that gave credit to Betsy Ross as the
designer and creator—and chances are, she was. Of course, as in most things
historical when none made record of the event, some controversy does exist.
Betsy Ross, the eighth of seventeen children of
Samuel and Rebecca Griscom, Quakers who lived in Philadelphia, was apprenticed
to an upholsterer. She became a very accomplished seamstress. While there, she
met another apprentice, John Ross. The two fell in love and on November 4, 1773,
eloped because she knew her strict Quaker parents and church would not accept
him since he was Episcopalian.
The young couple set up shop on a nearby street and
went into the upholstery business. They had been married only three years when
John, a member of the militia after the American Revolution began, was killed in
a munitions explosion. Betsy, his widow and his small daughter, continued to
live and work in the house and shop.
In 1776, General George Washington, war financier
Robert Morris, and Second Continental Congress member George Ross, a relative of
Betsy’s, came to her shop with a request.
Up until that time, the different states each had
their own flag. AT least two of the thirteen had a blue patch, or canton. Two
had stars, one or two had the British emblem in the corner. One had a snake on a
back ground of red and white stripes and the words, DON’T TREAD ON ME.
Benjamin Franklin favored a flag with a rattlesnake
on it. He said in an article in Bradford’s Pennsylvania Journal, “The
rattlesnake is found in no other quarter of the globe than in America. She never
wounds until she has generously given notice even to her enemy, and cautioned
him against the danger of treading on her. Am I wrong, sirs, in thinking this a
strong picture of the temper and conduct of America?”
But Washington had a design on his mind when he and
his friends visited Betsy. He even had a sketch of a banner with thirteen red
and white stripes and thirteen six pointed stars on a blue canton. Betsy showed
him how to fold and make a more graceful five-pointed star with one cut. She
also arranged them in a circle.
On June 14—Flag Day—1777 the Continental Congress
passed a resolution mandating the flag’s design—but no mention was made of
the designer. When Vermont and Kentucky joined the union, two more stars were
added and that version was flying over Fort McHenry when Francis Scott Key was
inspired to write “The Star Spangled Banner.”
More states joining the union made a circle difficult
to maintain, so the rectangular arrangement was adopted. August 21, 1959,
President Dwight Eisenhower signed an Executive Order mandating the flag’s
proportions and ordering that any additions of states would be recognized with a
star placed on the flag on the following July 4th.
Betsy Ross married privateer Joseph Ashburn in 1777.
She had one daughter with Ashburn before he was captured by the British and sent
to Old Mill Prison in Plymouth, England. There he met John Claypoole who had
been a friend of Betsy’s in childhood. Ashburn died in prison, Claypoole did
not. He returned to the United States with the sad news for Betsy in 1782. She
and Claypoole were married in 1783. They had five daughters.
No notice of Betsy Ross as the designer of the first
flag was made until almost 100 years after the fact when her grandson, William
Canby addressed a gathering of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania and
announced that she had made the flag at the request of General Washington. His
case rested solely on the sworn affidavits of her immediate family.
Charles Sumner proclaimed, and speaks for us even
today, November 19, 1867, “There is the National flag. He must be cold,
indeed, who can look upon its folds rippling in the breeze without pride of
country. If in a foreign land, the flag is companionship, and country itself,
with all its endearments.”